So a lot going on tomorrow at the library. All of the providers are available for one-on-ones as well. You just need to schedule that with them directly.

This is the first full gathering of ecosystem resources in Columbia, it’s a big deal. I hope our listeners and the Columbia entrepreneurial community will take advantage of it.

Knowing you need help is one of those self-awareness things. Let’s talk about self-awareness while building our companies.

Segment 2

Born to Build – self awareness. So Born to Build has four parts: 1) creating self-awareness, 2) recognizing opportunities, 3) activating on ideas, and 4) building a team.

We’ve only got three Tuesdays to discuss, so today we’ll do self-awareness and for the next two weeks we’ll take on the other three.

What is “self awareness” in the business-building sense?

This part is broken down into three pieces: What evidence do we have? Identifying your builder talents, and The Builder’s Method.

Identifying you builder talents is that self-assessment you mentioned last week, the Builder 10. You have to purchase the assessment (unless you purchase the book) and it will identify if you are a Rainmaker, Conductor, or Expert. Those are the three builder roles as identified by your aptitude in 10 builder talents:

Deferring to Shennice since she read the book — where are your talents? What’s your primary builder role?

Once you know your talents and role, then what?

The keynote we interviewed last week, Elaine Pofeldt, talked about those Million-Dollar One Person Businesses realizing they needed to make better use of their resources. Is that something this Builder 10 can give you awareness of?

Tiffany Norwood was here two weeks ago and she’s got this approach to building that’s about imagination and faith. She says trusting your vision and yourself are two key elements to creating anything. She’ll share more of that in her keynote on Friday.

“Self Awareness is having a clear perception of your personality, including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions. Self Awareness allows you to understand other people, how they perceive you, your attitude and your responses to them in the moment.”

“Self-Awareness is the thinking skill that focuses on one’s ability to accurately judge their own performance and behavior and to respond appropriately to different social situations. Self-Awareness helps an individual to tune into their feelings, as well as to the behaviors and feelings of others.”

There are two kinds of self-awareness – “internal self-awareness, represents how clearly we see our own values, passions, aspirations, fit with our environment, reactions (including thoughts, feelings, behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses), and impact on others.”

We can unpack that a little — values? Passions? Aspirations? How do we assess our fit in the environment? Can we be honest about our reactions and thoughts and feelings? Can we understand our impact on others?

“We’ve found that internal self-awareness is associated with higher job and relationship satisfaction, personal and social control, and happiness; it is negatively related to anxiety, stress, and depression.”

Let’s unpack that, too. Associated with higher job and relationship satisfaction. So does our self-awareness have to be accurate to achieve satisfaction? I like the “personal” and “social” control — what do we have control over? What do we need to control?

“The second category, external self-awareness, means understanding how other people view us, in terms of those same factors listed above. Our research shows that people who know how others see them are more skilled at showing empathy and taking others’ perspectives. For leaders who see themselves as their employees do, their employees tend to have a better relationship with them, feel more satisfied with them, and see them as more effective in general.”

Interesting that knowing how others see you is correlated with being able to empathize with them. Taking others’ perspectives is an emotional maturity concept, right? Being willing to imagine what someone else is experiencing? Being will to ask them?

Segment 4

Events this week:

1MC features FlyerTap and kicks off the service providers’ fair at the Richland Library.

Friday is our big Women’s Business Summit event, if you’re not registered for that, use this link to get registered. We have a great lineup of speakers and leaders in attendance. Including:

Tammy Johnson who runs High Spirits Hospitality Group in the Upstate, Melissa Lindler from the OBO, Savanna Wilburn from the SBA, Laura Corder from the Department of Commerce’s Office of Innovation, Beth Renninger from the University of South Carolina’s Sales Training Center, fresh off a good showing at the national competition with her students in which one won $750. Also, Meghan Hughes Hickman from Engenuity, Marsha Barnes of The Finance Bar, Martha Brown of La-Z-Boy Southeast, and Pamela Eyring of the Protocol School of Washington. Shennice has a session and I’m sitting in a slush-fest-style breakout where we’re going to review Lean Canvas submissions and offer feedback. Should be a great day!

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